The physics programme and the design are described of a new collider for particle and nuclear physics, the Large Hadron Electron Collider (LHeC), in which a newly built electron beam of 60 GeV, to possibly 140 GeV, energy collides with the intense hadron beams of the LHC. Compared to the first ep collider, HERA, the kinematic range covered is extended by a factor of twenty in the negative four-momentum squared, Q 2 , and in the inverse Bjorken x, while with the design luminosity of 10 33 cm −2 s −1 the LHeC is projected to exceed the integrated HERA luminosity by two orders of magnitude. The physics programme is devoted to an exploration of the energy frontier, complementing the LHC and its discovery potential for physics beyond the Standard Model with high precision deep inelastic scattering measurements. These are designed to investigate a variety of fundamental questions in strong and electroweak interactions. The LHeC thus continues the path of deep inelastic scattering (DIS) into unknown areas of physics and kinematics. The physics programme also includes electron-deuteron and electron-ion scattering in a (Q 2 1/x) range extended by four orders of magnitude as compared to previous lepton-nucleus DIS experiments for novel investigations of neutron's and nuclear structure, the initial conditions of Quark-Gluon Plasma formation and further quantum chromodynamic phenomena. The LHeC may be realised either as a ring-ring or as a linac-ring collider. Optics and beam dynamics studies are presented for both versions, along with technical design considerations on the interaction region, magnets including new dipole prototypes, cryogenics, RF, and further components. A design study is also presented of a detector suitable to perform high precision DIS measurements in a wide range of acceptance using state-ofthe art detector technology, which is modular and of limited size enabling its fast installation. The detector includes tagging devices for electron, photon, proton and neutron detection near to the beam pipe. Civil engineering and installation studies are presented for the accelerator and the detector. The LHeC can be built within a decade and thus be operated while the LHC runs in its high-luminosity phase. It so represents a major opportunity for progress in particle physics exploiting the investment made in the LHC.

A free relativistic electron in an electromagnetic field is a pure case of a light-matter interaction. In the laboratory environment, this interaction can be realized by colliding laser pulses with electron beams produced from particle accelerators. The process of single photon absorption and reemission by the electron, so-called linear Thomson scattering, results in radiation that is Doppler shifted into the x-ray and gamma-ray regions. At elevated laser intensity, nonlinear effects should come into play when the transverse motion of the electrons induced by the laser beam is relativistic. In the present experiment, we achieved this condition and characterized the second harmonic of Thomson x-ray scattering using the counterpropagation of a 60 MeV electron beam and a subterawatt CO2 laser beam.

An experiment on the investigation of optical diffraction radiation (ODR) from a slit target as a possible tool for noninvasive electron beam-size diagnostics has been performed at the KEK accelerator test facility. The experimental setup has been installed at the diagnostics section of the extraction line. We have performed the first incoherent ODR observation from a slit target. The measured angular distributions are in reasonable agreement with the theoretical expectation. The beam-size effect onto the ODR angular pattern has been observed. Moreover, the sensitivity to the beam size as small as 14 microm has been achieved.

We demonstrated for the first time the production of highly polarized short-pulse positrons with a finite energy spread in accordance with a new scheme that consists of two-quantum processes, such as inverse Compton scattering and electron-positron pair creation. Using a circularly polarized laser beam of 532 nm scattered off a high-quality, 1.28 GeV electron beam, we obtained polarized positrons with an intensity of 2×10 4 e + /bunch. The magnitude of positron polarization was determined to be 73 ± 15(sta) ± 19(sys)% by means of a newly designed positron polarimeter.

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